“People do it every day of the week, and we stop it because we have cops on the beat,” Boxer said.

The California Democrat and chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee said EPA would remain shuttered indefinitely under the House GOP’s strategy of re-opening parts of the federal government.

“If you look at all their mini-bills, not one of them restored any funding for any agency that comes close to enforcing our environmental protection laws,” Boxer said.

Safety investigations have also been stopped in their tracks, including the examination of the explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Tex., that killed 15 and injured 160 last spring, as well as every environmental review necessary to proceed with highway and bridge projects. Work at hundreds of Superfund cleanup sites has also stopped.

Boxer said many communities are starting to hurt because of closures, including Mariposa County because of Yosemite’s shutdown and Mountain View, where more than 1,000 employees of NASA’s Ames Research Center are furloughed.